Cloud Atlas that crappy movie is getting another 4k release?

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Figured that had to be on the horizon as they’ve pretty much been sticking to the evergreens. I’ve had this one so many times over the years and never tire of it, but the audio on the Hong Kong Blu (and at least one of the DVDs prior to that) was that faux 5.1 and or TrueHD stuff they were ‘re-doing’ for everything. Listings I’ve seen for this so far don’t mention the audio options, but hopefully the original is among them. Now the big question is whether to get this eventually or for the Arrow edition which might add more bonus features, better artwork, etc.

The full July slate from Shout / GKIDS:

I saw Lupin the The Immortal Bloodline in the theater, with about 5 other people. Possibly the weirdest, or most off-putting Lupin movie ever. Probably gonna buy it.

The Evil that Men Do was released several years ago by Shout and was barebones. I passed on it at the time. Wonder if it’s any different.

I’ve never seen Full Contact, but I’ve read good things. Any of the resident HK action fans recommend owning that one?

Yep. Though It has a much lower body count than Woo films, the violence hits much harder. Also contains some cool Bullet POV shots.

Recommended from me, too (keeping in mind my bias for HK cinema in general, of course ) and preferably in a sale if you think it might not live up to the hype. Shout seems to put these Golden Princess films on streaming around the time of the disc releases, so there’s that option, too. As Mondo Kane notes, this one definitely gets into some stylish-for-the-sake-of-it camerawork in at least one of the gunfights. This is purely personal opinion but I think it’s Ringo Lam’s greatest film among many great films that he did (CITY / PRISON / SCHOOL ON FIRE, FULL ALERT, BURNING PARADISE, ADVENTURERS) even though it wasn’t as popular in Hong Kong as it became in the west. Simon Yam also gets one of his most memorably (and flamboyantly) vicious villain roles in this. Anthony Wong is also really good.

I’m curious if Shout (or Arrow) will put more than one version of the film on the disc. I can only find a list of the bonus features so far.

Semi-related: I noticed that SCHOOL ON FIRE is playing on the Criterion Channel (and maybe has been for a while?). It’d be cool if that was being prepped by Shout so we could finally have all of his ON FIRE films upgraded.

I was skimming Tubi last night for a couple of old things and discovered that four of the five ACES GO PLACES films are now streaming with Shout’s ‘Hong Kong Cinema Classics’ logo at the beginning.

The series – especially the first four, and doubly especially the first two – is a personal favourite from nearly the beginning of my experience with HK movies back in mid- to late-80’s, so I’m admittedly biased here. Grain of salt, etc. The first four films were ‘exportable’ enough, though, to be dubbed, cut, and released internationally as the MAD MISSION series, and those versions were eventually put out on VHS in North America and later on DVD by Anchor Bay, which further bundled them into a boxed set. Since then, the better HK versions have only been available on various DVDs and Blu-rays from Hong Kong (with shitty audio remixes), including boxed sets on both formats, which I should probably consider trading now as it seems highly likely that Shout will be releasing them in a Blu-ray set at some point. There’s not much need or demand for these in 4K, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they push buyers (again) into a pricier combo collection.

Oh well. Just glad to know they’re finally seeing the light of day again. All five are breezy, knowingly goofy, anything-goes action-cartoons that reward level expectations really well (in my opinion, of course ).

These aren’t part of the Golden Princess catalog. They were all Cinema City productions. Now that Shout’s TIGER ON BEAT collection is available, they might be able to capitalize a little on the ‘re-introduction’ of Conan Lee to western viewers in those films as he also stars in ACES V.

And if these are indeed destined for a Shout boxed set, I seriously hope that one of the supplement contributors will finally settle any beliefs that Neil Connery (Sean’s younger brother who scored a few acting gigs on name value) does not appear in the third film in this series (incidentally the highest grossing film in Hong Kong in 1984). He’s been included in the cast list at IMDb nearly as long as that site has existed.

At the moment, Tubi only has Parts 2 thru 5 available to watch, so maybe they’re holding back Part 1 for a disc release?

Some trailers below. Parts 1 and 2 were directed by Eric Tsang, Part 3 by Tsui Hark, Part 4 by Ringo Lam, and Part 5 by Lau Kar-Leung. There was a sixth film years later in 1997, but it was made under a different company with a different cast, so I doubt it will be included with any bundle of the original five.






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Bonus behind-the-scenes promo for Part 3, albeit without subs, but maybe that’s something Shout (or Arrow?) could correct?


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ETA: just noticed that the 1982 Sammo Hung movie CARRY ON PICKPOCKET is also on Tubi with Shout’s HKCC logo, so hopefully that’s headed to disc as well. Hunt’s co-star in this was Frankie Chan, who played the villain in Hung’s PRODIGAL SON opposite Yuen Biao the previous year. PICKPOCKET was co-produced by Chan, and I believe he was connected to its production company Always Good Film Co. Either way, he produced, directed, and/or starred in a number of action-comedy/romance films under that banner and several were distributed by Golden Princess which means they’re probably among Shout’s acquisitions, which could (?) make PICKPOCKET a good test to see if Chan draws much interest.

New preorders are up!

A UHD edition of The Stunt Man (if you haven’t already imported Radiance/Transmission’s), the complete Speed Racer anime, and School on Fire (UHD) are the highlights.

SCHOOL ON FIRE is a classic in any form, but especially its rare uncut form. Looking at Shout’s packaging, I’m having a hard time figuring out what they’re presenting. It does list 103 minutes which is longer than the more common (and censored) 101 minute theatrical cut. But the back of the Shout sleeve lists ‘extended and uncensored’ footage as bonus material on the Blu-ray, so I’m curious which version of the film – and there are a few – comprises the main feature on these discs. I’m confident that it’s as close to an original, mostly (?) uncensored cut as we can hope for, but those supplements make me wonder. Oh well, it’s gotta be an improvement on the Panorama Blu-ray from Hong Kong, which was deceptively described on the sleeve as an “uncut director’s version” but the movie itself was still the heavily censored version.

As far as I can recall, the completely uncut version only appeared on a Tai Seng VHS tape way, way back, so if it’s no longer possible to reconstruct that version (or the HK censors are somehow still not allowing certain types of footage outside the city), then it would’ve been cool to see the VHS transferred as an extra instead of just the scenes. I wonder if Arrow might take a different approach here. 🤔

My understanding is that Shout tried to find the uncensored materials, but we're unable to find anything in acceptable quality. My guess is that the vhs was the only option. They chose not to incorporate that footage into the primary presentation and will include it as deleted scenes instead. I'm hoping Arrow will include the full uncut version (in vhs quality) as a bonus feature like they did with the Killer.

I missed out on the Radiance limited so this will be a purchase from me.

Same here. Surely there aren’t legal reasons why Shout couldn’t have included the whole VHS version, but I suppose that’s not their thing anyway. Fingers crossed for Arrow. It might be interesting to include the ‘official’ HK theatrical (and ultimately HK home video) version as an extra as well, just to kinda show what still got altered even during the more permissive British era, or perhaps an ‘expert’ illustrating the many differences between both of those and the Tai Seng tape.

Just looking at Shout’s HK movies again in the wee hours and noticed something with the spine numbers:

35 - FULL CONTACT
36 - I LOVE MARIA
42 - SCHOOL ON FIRE

That five-film gap is presumably the ACES GO PLACES collection, as mentioned a few posts back. Filthy Harry’s been away too long. 😎👍